The Khaleefah is the state. He possesses all of the mandatory powers of the state, and they are:

It is He who makes the divine rules (Ahkam Shari’ah) once He adopted them as binding; they would then become laws that have to be obeyed and their violation would not be allowed.

He is responsible for the domestic and foreign policies of the state. He is the supreme commander in chief of all the armed forces and He has full powers to declare war, concludes peace treaties, truces and all other treaties.

He has the power to accept (foreign) ambassadors and to refuse them, as well as the powers to appoint Muslim ambassadors and to remove them.

It is the Khaleefah who appoints and removes the assistants and Wulah. They are all responsible before him and before the Council of the Ummah.

It is He who appoints and removes the supreme judge (Qadhil-Qudhat), as well as district administrators, army commanders, chiefs of staff, and the commanders in chief. They are all answerable to him and not to the Council of the Ummah.

It is He who adopts the divine rules, in the light of which the State’s budget is drafted, and He decides the details of the budget and the allotted funds required for each department, whether concerning revenues or expenses.

Evidence of these mandatory powers is the fact that the Khilafah as a general ruling over all the Muslims worldwide, with the objective of implementing the rules of the Deen and carrying the Message of Islam to the world, and this in itself is an evidence. However, the word state is a technical term, whose meaning differs according to the views of the nations. The West considers the state as the land, inhabitants and the rulers, for the state in their view is defined within borders that they call the country. Sovereignty, in their view, belongs to the people, while the ruling, i.e. the authority is collective and not individualistic. Thus the concept of the state became known as the total of the country, the inhabitants and the rulers. Therefore, they have a head of state, i.e. head of rulers, the people, the country (land) and a prime minister. However, in Islam, there are no permanent borders, for the Message of Islam has to be carried to the whole world. Therefore frontiers move with the movement of the authority of Islam to other countries. The term country means the place where a person resides permanently i.e. his home and town, no more and no less. Sovereignty belongs to the Shar’a, not to the people. Thus the rulers are controlled by the will of the Shar’a. The Ummah is also controlled by the will of the Shar’a. The ruling i.e. authority is for individuals and it is not collective. The Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said: